Alan Campbell - Iron Angel

The other guests rushed over.

“Miss Bainbridge,” Carrick said. “There were some initial…teething problems with an earlier automation. But I can assure you that these have now been fixed. There’s really no danger at all.”

“So there was an arconite at Skirl,” Jones muttered to Ersimmin.

“And it would seem to have passed this way,” the pianist replied.

Edith stabbed a gloved finger at him. “Those are not teething problems…” Her shrill voice rose above the sound of the steamer’s engines. “That is a graveyard, and I am getting off before this vessel ends up down there, too.”

At that moment a horn blared in the quarry behind them and, after a heartbeat, was answered by a blast from the Sally ’s own foghorn. Harper felt a shudder run through the hurricane deck and looked up to see a forest of piston shafts and wheels turning inside the arconite’s ribcage. Gulls scattered, screaming, around the huge machine. The red light at the heart of the engines darkened, and started to pulse.

And the bone and metal automaton raised its vast grinning skull above the quarry and straightened its spine. Its thin wings unfolded, extended, and cut through the clouds, shedding sheets of water. The steamship trembled again, then lurched. Harper sensed her Locator murmuring against her hip. She slipped the device from its holster, wound it quickly, and studied the wavering needle for a moment before relaxing. She had registered nothing more than a surge of power from the fragment of Iril inside the arconite’s heart.

The sound of metal scraping on rock came from the rear of the Sally Broom, followed by the shouts of men:

“Lines clear!”

“Raise the gangway.”

Chains rattled; the steamship trembled. The huge engine inside the arconite’s ribcage was churning furiously now, pumping chemically altered blood through its metal veins. Its heart-light throbbed, brighter and faster. Dark walls of gears chattered. Piston shafts moved in its arms; camshafts turned, quickening. A mighty hiss came from the skull, and Harper felt the air stir. She clutched the rail of the hurricane deck.

In one monstrous hand, the arconite lifted the steamship-locomotive, passengers, and all-away from the edge of the Moine Massif plateau and out into the open air.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Carrick shouted over the clamour of working metal, “let us return inside where we can enjoy the descent in comfort.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Jones exclaimed. “This is too good a sight to watch through any porthole windows.”

The ship lurched violently and then halted. Her funnels gave a massive groan as they strained against the body of the ship. Harper stumbled, but the old reservist grabbed her.

“Our gigantic friend needs to learn gentleness,” Jones remarked. “Another movement like that could break this vessel in two.”

She caught her breath. “I hope that didn’t shatter some of the more fragile glass inside.”

“I’m sure the staff have wrapped up everything breakable.”

“Not the slaves.”

“Oh.” Jones’s face fell. “I see what you mean.”

Ersimmin had caught hold of Edith Bainbridge, who was now beating the pianist with her fan. “Get off me, you lout. It’s going to drop us! I must find a life preserver.”

For a few moments the ship remained motionless in the arconite’s grip. Harper leaned out over the balustrade and peered back along the hull. Beyond the vessel’s stern, the wet brown cliffs of the Moine Massif sank a sheer four hundred feet down to the calm waters. A blizzard of gulls skirled around the ship. The arconite’s skull turned slowly, then moved closer until its yellow grin filled the sky above them. Harper’s Locator gave out a sudden shrill tone.

“What is it?” Jones asked.

She stared hard at the device with a growing sense of dread. Its fluctuating needle darted back and forth, between both ends of the scale. Crystals pulsed fiercely inside.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “The Locator doesn’t know. It’s panicking again.”

The reservist kept one hand on the hilt of his sword. “Another uninvited guest?”

She shook her head. “It might just be the proximity of the-”

But just at that moment another massive jolt unbalanced the passengers. Still gripped in the automaton’s skeletal hand, the ship began a sudden rapid descent.

“Cruel heavens!” Jones cried. The old man’s white hair lashed about his face as the ship dropped closer to Larnaig’s waters. “Do we need to descend quite so briskly?”

“I expect that need has little to do with it,” Ersimmin replied. The pianist had extricated himself from Edith. Now like his reservist colleague, he appeared to be quite relaxed-an observation which could not be extended to encompass the other guests. “From the expression on our host’s face,” Ersimmin went on, inclining his head towards Chief Carrick, “it seems that we are currently experiencing yet another of his teething problems.”

Carrick was clutching the deck rail with both fists, his face a curdled, off-white colour. Most of the passengers had found something to hang on to now. The gentlemen had grabbed the saloon bulkheads or deck balustrades; the ladies clung to the gentlemen.

The steamship shuddered again, and then tilted sharply towards the bow. Several passengers stumbled. Plates toppled and smashed within the saloon.

Ersimmin’s voice radiated calmness. “I’m beginning to understand why the Mesmerists hired our railroad company to support the War Effort,” he said to Jones. “They make terrifying soldiers, but they haven’t quite got the hang of transportation matters.”

The jolt had sent two Northmen crashing into each other, shattering their glass-scaled skins. Mina’s feet slipped out from under her on the slick floor, and she struggled to push herself back up onto her hands and knees. Her hands were now wet and red. Oil lanterns stuttered in the deep gloom of the ship’s hold, throwing lances of light through the transparent carriages.

“Wasn’t this what you wanted?” Hasp cried. “A quick return to Hell.”

“I asked you to kill me,” she replied. “I didn’t ask for this.”

“An unusually biased form of suicide. Still, there’s a glut of fresh souls here. Time for some thaumaturgy, if I’m not mistaken?”

“How did you know?”

“I’ve known from the start.”

She wrinkled her nose.

The slave pen lurched again and another of Rys’s former soldiers crashed against the wall. His glass scales cracked at the wrists, elbows, and head; his life poured out of him.

Mina muttered a prayer: an appeal to her guardian, Basilis, the Hound Master of Ayen. She made sigils in the bloody floor:

One red soul for the Forest of Eyes,

A second for the Forest of Teeth,

The third to rot in the Forest of War,

If you’ll aid your servant now.

Hasp grunted. “It’s been a while since I’ve witnessed blood thaumaturgy and longer since I’ve seen that bastard Basilis. This’ll be fun.”

The stink from the Forest of War greeted Mina’s nostrils as something moved within the red pool on the floor, then reached out roots and branches, growing until it filled the space before her. This was Basilis’s heart tree, a manifestation of Ayen’s Hound Master himself.

Those Northmen who were still alive to witness this apparition now scuttled away to the far corner of the chamber, their eyes wide with fear and horror.

A deep voice rolled out from the tree: “These are weak souls, thaumaturge.” Basilis’s arboreal manifestation dripped and shuddered. “As thin as memories.”

“They’re still souls,” she retorted. “And I didn’t have to kill them myself. I need your help, Basilis. We need to do something about Dill.”